The best films allow us to sympathize with those who are unsympathizable. From Fritz Lang (M) to Todd Solondz (Happiness), directors have taken great risks by asking us to cozy up to despicable characters and, in the words of E.M. Forster, “only connect.” We can take pity without excusing, understand without exonerating. It is a difficult proposition and only the most skilled filmmakers can carry it off.
In The Death of Dick Long, director Daniel Scheinert (the man behind the gloriously innovative Swiss Army Man) does not attempt to recreate his prior success. Instead, he introduces us to Zeke (Michael Abbott Jr.) and Earl (Andre Hyland), a pair of dumbasses in Alabama who may very well have killed their friend Dick Long. After dropping their dying friend off outside the emergency room, Zeke and Earl inadvertently do just about everything in their dim power to make sure they do get caught by the cops. Everything backfires in a series of damning, yet hilarious, misadventures.
If the first half of The Death of Dick Long is basically a comic series of mistakes and misunderstandings, the second half darkens and we learn the sad truth behind the title character’s demise. Without giving anything away, all the jokes vanish and suddenly we are forced to confront just how far our sympathy can extend. Scheinert could have continued the cynical, yet funny, tone of the Dick Long’s first section but instead he tries to build gravitas and reach for the tonal heights folks like Solondz have achieved before him. But he can’t quite get there.
For fans of Swiss Army Man, the film where Daniel Radcliffe played a flatulent corpse and Paul Dano his only friend, The Death of Dick Long lacks the frantic camerawork and creative apocalyptic pace that made the prior film so indelible. Even when that film turned serious, Scheinert allowed the manic comedy to continue. In The Death of Dick Long, things just get really sad. And for more puritanical viewers, it will be hard for that sadness to find willing purchase.
Though Hyland’s Earl threatens to derail the film into a parody about “dumb hicks,” it’s Abbott’s Zeke that makes for much of the film’s heartbreak. Married with a small daughter, the horrible secret of Dick Long’s death will threaten not only the foundation of his marriage but his standing as a man in this unforgiving world. There is no wriggle-room for sexual aberration, especially in the heart of country where good ol’ boys drive pick-up trucks and wear MAGA hats.
Yet, The Death of Dick Long doesn’t exactly succeed. The tonal shifts are too jarring, and despite the film’s fondness for Zeke and Earl, it’s sometimes hard to feel for them the same way we can pity the cowering Peter Lorre at the end of M or the scene where Dylan Baker, a pedophile in Happiness, admits to his son that he wouldn’t fuck him in a tearful almost-rejection. When the awful truth gets out, and it truly does, Zeke and Earl become instant personae non grata. Unlike Dano’s character at the end of Swiss Army Man, these guys do not learn to be comfortable in their skin. It will be a hard, ambiguous future for them both, one that the film has no problem leaving open-ended and its audience somewhat unsatisfied.
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